When a civil engineer learns certain rules of algebra or calculus it is not merely for the purpose of storing up knowledge. It is for the purpose of learning things which he can apply to his daily work. For instance, the surveyor learns what a sine and a cosine are, and how to use a table of logarithms. Then he uses that knowledge to measure the exact distance between two points across an impassable river, and in a hundred other ways.

Exactly in similar fashion the salesperson learns a mental rule of suggestion, and thereby makes a sale. Or he learns how to improve his personal powers. And so on.

Prof. Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard said, “Every experience leaves the brain altered. The nerve fibers and cells have gone into new stages of  disposition for certain excitements.” To learn how to alter your own nerve fibers and cells to make them more easily disposed to the excitation that you desire, and to learn how to alter the mental processes of the buyer that are opposing your success, is the thing that makes psychology valuable to the salesperson.

One of the things that gives hope and courage to men and women who study the structure of the mind, is the fact that the brain tissues may be altered with much greater ease and to a far greater extent than other bodily tissues.

Every thought wears a path in the tissues of the brain.

Constant thinking builds up the brain at a marvelous rate.

A scar on the surface of the body caused by a wound may remain for life, but when brain tissue is injured and replaced it is replaced by entirely new tissue wherein no sign of the former scar remains. It is important for the salesperson to realize how vitally the study of the mind affects the success of the salesperson in his or her chosen field.

In order to indicate to the salesperson the great scope of psychology in selling, here is a list of some of the important topics in mind-study:

• The five senses: How to train them.
• Suggestion: Introducing a favorable thought in the buyer’s mind.
• Auto-suggestion: Influencing your own mind by helpful thoughts.
• Attention: What it is, and the art of commanding it.
• Selective attention: Why and how the mind selects certain topics.
• Thinking: Analyzed as a consecutive process of observing, comparing, reasoning, and judging
• Emotion or Feeling: How to arouse it in your favor.
• The Will: How to compel action.
• Imagination: Its value to a salesperson.
• Memory: How to make it serve you.
• Habit: How to make it work for you rather than against you.

If you want to learn more about the connection between psychology and selling, please keep following my blog.

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